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Rethinking Causality in Quantum Mechanics

  • Book
  • © 2019

Overview

Authors:
  1. Christina Giarmatzi

    1. School of Mathematics and Physics, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

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  • Nominated as an outstanding Ph.D. thesis by the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia,
  • One of the first comprehensive introductions to quantum causality
  • In-depth description of concepts and methods
  • Investigates quantum causality in theory and experiments

Part of the book series: Springer Theses (Springer Theses)

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xv
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    • Christina Giarmatzi
    Pages 1-6

  3. Causal and Causally Separable Processes

    • Christina Giarmatzi
    Pages 7-64

  4. Witnessing Causal Nonseparability: Theory and Experiment

    • Christina Giarmatzi
    Pages 65-89

  5. Causal Polytopes

    • Christina Giarmatzi
    Pages 91-107

  6. Experimental Test of a Classical Causal Model for Quantum Correlations

    • Christina Giarmatzi
    Pages 109-123

  7. A Quantum Causal Discovery Algorithm

    • Christina Giarmatzi
    Pages 125-150

  8. Summary

    • Christina Giarmatzi
    Pages 151-153

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 155-157
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Keywords

About this book

Causality is central to understanding the mechanisms of nature: some event "A" is the cause of another event “B”. Surprisingly, causality does not follow this simple rule in quantum physics: due to to quantum superposition we might be led to believe that "A causes B” and that "B causes A”. This idea is not only important to the foundations of physics but also leads to practical advantages: a quantum circuit with such indefinite causality performs computationally better than one with definite causality. This thesis provides one of the first comprehensive introductions to quantum causality, and presents a number of advances. It provides an extension and generalization of a framework that enables us to study causality within quantum mechanics, thereby setting the stage for the rest of the work. This comprises: mathematical tools to define causality in terms of probabilities; computational tools to prove indefinite causality in an experiment; means to experimentally test particular causal structures; and finally an algorithm that detects the exact causal structure in an quantum experiment.

Authors and Affiliations

  • School of Mathematics and Physics, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

    Christina Giarmatzi

About the author

Dr Giarmatzi obtained her Physics degree from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in Greece. After a short visit to rainy Paris for her Masters, and cloudy Brussels for an attempt at a PhD, she settled in sunny Brisbane, at The University of Queensland, for her PhD. Right after the thesis submission she remained at UQ, as a PostDoctoral Research Fellow until present. Having explored different theoretical aspects of quantum causality, now her interests lay in exploiting them to aid quantum technologies.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Rethinking Causality in Quantum Mechanics

  • Authors: Christina Giarmatzi

  • Series Title: Springer Theses

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31930-4

  • Publisher: Springer Cham

  • eBook Packages: Physics and Astronomy, Physics and Astronomy (R0)

  • Copyright Information: Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-31929-8Published: 04 November 2019

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-31932-8Published: 04 November 2020

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-31930-4Published: 21 October 2019

  • Series ISSN: 2190-5053

  • Series E-ISSN: 2190-5061

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XV, 157

  • Number of Illustrations: 20 b/w illustrations, 15 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Quantum Physics, Quantum Computing, History and Philosophical Foundations of Physics

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